Surface buckling, or wrinkling, can be generated in a variety of systems that include: 1) thermally or mechanically stressed metallic, polymeric and silicate thin films supported on elastomeric substrates, 2) dried thin films prepared by sol-gel method, as well as 3) soft gels placed under geometric confinement that are swollen or dried. See, e.g., N. Bowden, S. Brittain, A. G. Evans, J. W. Hutchinson and G. W. Whitesides, Nature, 1998, vol. 393, pages 146-149; W. T. S. Huck, N. Bowden, P. Onck, T. Pardoen, J. W. Hutchinson and G. W. Whitesides, Langmuir, 2000, vol. 16, pages 3497-3501; C. Harrison, C. M. Stafford, W. Zhang and A. Karim, Applied Physics Letters, 2004, vol. 85, pages 4016-4018; C. M. Stafford, C. M. Harrison, K. L. Beers, A. Karim, E. J. Amis, M. R. Vanlandingham, H.-C. Kim, W. Volksen, R. D. Miller and E. E. Simonyi, Nature Materials, 2004, vol. 3, pages 545-550; D. B. H. Chua, H. T. Ng and S. F. Y. Li, Applied Physics Letters, 2000, vol. 76, pages 721-723; N. Bowden, W. T. S. Huck, K. E. Paul and G. W. Whitesides, Applied Physics Letters, 1999, vol. 75, pages 2557-2559; K. Efimenko, M. Rackaitis, E. Manias, A. Vaziri, L. Mahadevan and J. Genzer, Nature Materials, 2005, vol. 4, pages 293-297; S. J. Kwon, J.-H. Park and J. G. Park, Physical Review E, 2005, vol. 71, pages 11601-11604; R. C. Hayward, B. F. Chmelka and E. J. Kramer, Macromolecules, 2005, vol. 38, pages 7768-7783; T. Tanaka, S.-T. Sun, Y. Hirokawa, S. Katayama, J. Kucera, Y. Hirose and T. Amiya, Nature, 1987, vol. 325, pages 796-798; E. S. Matsuo and T. Tanaka, Nature, 1992, vol. 358, pages 482-484. These surface relief structures are interesting for their pattern complexity as well as ease of formation with a dominant periodicity. Although some mechanisms for global-scale alignment of local wrinkling have been demonstrated, there is a need for surface wrinkling methods that allow global-scale wrinkling alignment with applicability to a range of materials and ease of tuning buckling wavelength and persistence lengths.